Gaines took her hand and helped her to her feet.

“I really don’t think I can do this . . . Don’t make me, Sheriff. Don’t make me . . .”

Gaines said nothing. Her put his arm around her shoulder and turned toward Powell, who stood near a door on the right.

Powell pushed the door open and then followed them through into the morgue.

There was always a sense of surreal disconnection that removed John Gaines from such scenes. The dead were the dead. It was so clearly evident to him that the energy, the very spirit that had animated the body in life, was something separate from the body. Especially with young children who had died unexpectedly, it seemed to be the case that something remained in the vicinity. As if life had to reconcile itself to departing.

This was something he felt in the presence of Nancy Denton.

Her body had been covered with a simple white sheet. Victor Powell steeled himself. He took the sheet at its uppermost edge, and drawing it down, he revealed the face of the girl to her mother. Judith Denton’s breathing stopped. Gaines waited for the hysterical rush of grief that he knew was coming, something that would pale into insignificance anything she might have expressed before . . .

“She looks the same . . .”

Judith Denton’s words floated into the air, and they just hung there.

She looks the same . . .

Now that the mud had been cleaned away, Gaines saw her with such clarity.

She was a beautiful girl, her complexion and coloring more fall than winter, her dark hair swept back from her face, her eyes closed as if in sleep, her expression almost restful. Gaines did not understand how this could be. How could a body stay unchanged for twenty years? How was such a thing even possible? It was as if she had been locked in time while the entire world went on without her. Gaines imagined meeting someone from his own past, someone from two decades before, only to find that despite the passing of so many years, they had not changed at all. It provoked a feeling that he had never before experienced, and he did not like it.

He remembered how he had crouched at the top of the bank, how he had looked down at her face, how the pale, white hand had appeared from the blackness, how it had taken the strength of six men to get the mud to relinquish her, the stark and terrible image of the wound that centered her fragile frame, and now silently thanking Victor Powell for not showing the wound to the girl’s mother . . .

Judith Denton’s knees started to give way beneath her. Gaines held on to her with everything he possessed. Coroner Powell drew the sheet back over Nancy, and then he hurried around the edge of the gurney to help as the woman became nothing but deadweight in Gaines’s hands.

Gaines felt as if he were watching the proceedings from the ceiling of the morgue. He could not hold Judith Denton anymore, and so he let her go.

Fifteen minutes later, Gaines and Judith Denton were seated on the bench in the corridor. From the car he’d brought a small silver flask, within which he kept a shot or two of bourbon. He had her drink it, held her as best he could while she cried some more, and then told her that the full examination was incomplete, that there were things he needed to know, things that could only be determined by the coroner. Without these things, it would be nigh on impossible to learn the truth of what had happened to her.

“The truth?” Judith asked. “The truth is that she is dead, Sheriff.” She turned and looked at him. “So let me take her. Let me take her back where she belongs and bury her proper. Let me at least do that.”

“I can’t, Judith, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. You’re gonna have to let me do what I need to do here, and as soon as I can release her, I will.”

“And if I refuse—” She stopped speaking and looked at him.

For a brief second, Gaines noticed a flash of anxiety in her eyes, as if she were afraid of what he might say or do.

“Judith,” he said calmly. “I need you to help me on this. I need you to let me keep her until our work is finished. I’ll help you make arrangements so things are done right. I’ll find some money—”

Judith shook her head. “That is something you don’t need to do,” she said.

Gaines knew better than to push the point. Pride would prevent Judith Denton from ever accepting a nickel from him. “This is important enough for me to insist,” he said. “I need to give the coroner the time he needs—”

“And if I don’t, you can have me arrested?”

“Judith, you know I would never do such a thing.”

She closed her eyes.

Gaines fell silent.

The tension between them was tangible.

“You gonna find the truth of what happened to her?” Judith asked.

“I’m going to do my best . . . That’s all I can tell you. I’m gonna do everything within my power to find out what happened—”

Judith was distant for a while. “Everyone loved her,” she said. “Everyone. And that night . . . the night she went missing . . .” She shook her head and looked down at the floor. “That was supposed to be a party. Just a party for no reason other than to have a party, but everyone was there. Michael was there, Maryanne, too, and the Wade boy. Michael had on his uniform, and he was so handsome . . .”

Judith looked back at Gaines. “I let her stay out. I let her stay out all night. She was sixteen years old, and she was a good girl. I trusted her . . .”

Gaines reached out and took her hand. He could feel the dampness of tears on her skin from where she had been clutching her handkerchief.

“You promise me—”

“You know I can’t promise anything, Judith. You cannot ask me to promise anything.”

“ ’Cept that you’ll do your best?” she asked. “You can promise me that much?”

“Yes. That much I can promise. That I’ll do my best.”

Judith Denton rose awkwardly, as if there were little strength in her knees.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said.

“I’m gonna walk, if you don’t mind, Sheriff. Been inside here enough. Been inside the house, inside the car. Feel like I’ve been inside for twenty years, you know? Want some air. Want to walk out there by myself and have a little time.”

“I understand.”

Judith Denton looked down at Gaines. “I’ll be expecting her home soon as you can bring her,” she said. “Home is where she belongs.”

“You have my word, Judith,” he replied. “You have my word.”

Gaines walked her to the door and watched her until she disappeared at the corner, and then he returned to the morgue.

Powell was standing over the still-shrouded body of Nancy Denton, and as Gaines entered, he drew back the entire length of the sheet and exposed the naked form of the girl.

“How can this be?” Gaines asked, still disbelieving.

“The mud,” Powell replied. “I don’t know a great deal about it, John, ’cept that it can happen. High salt content, low oxygen, buried deep enough to stay cold. And the fact that the mud got inside her as well. I’m sure that had something to do with it. It’s something you’d have to consult a forensic archaeologist or someone about, but I’ve heard of bodies being preserved for hundreds of years, not just decades.”

“Unbelievable,” Gaines said. “This is truly unbelievable.”

“The fact that you found her there is the least unbelievable thing about this,” Powell said. “It gets a great deal crazier from here on. Trust me.”

Gaines frowned.

“She wasn’t sexually assaulted,” Powell said. “I expected to find that she had been, but she hadn’t. I think her hands and feet were tied, but I cannot be sure. There are no signs of any real physical injury at all.”

“Cause of death?” Gaines asked.

“Asphyxiation, as far as I can tell right now,” Powell replied. “The hyoid bone in the throat is broken, concurrent with strangulation, but I’m not done.”

Powell indicated the eighteen-inch incision down her torso. “But this is my greatest concern . . .”